A stage at Stage

6 am,

Dec 6, 2014 , Stage Harbor, Chatham.

Sitting in a familiar place, not feeling a part of it for the first time in my life. A place I have lived and work, a place where my ancestors lived and worked. The shoreline and docks of Stage Harbor. 

A production company has created another world here for a movie. A Disney film -based on a actual event that occurred in Chatham decades ago- the biggest Untied States Coast Guard small boat rescue ever. The movie, The Finest Hours. 

It’s a drizzly morning with mild temperatures and I am surrounded by a world of friendly and polite strangers- set designers, electricians, carpenters, handlers and managers. Gypsy-esque folks from all travels of life.  I wonder, after spending a week with them, do they ever have a real moment in their life or do they travel from project to project building a reality that is based upon plans designed by a preconceived notion of what should be, living in a perpetual world of planning? Their perspective is the reality and this is the reality I am surrounded by. 

The crews arrived last week in mass. Trucks, cranes, wind machines, boats, gear, paints and props and the artisans and pre-production workers who proceeded to stripped down the dock, remove fishing gear and eclectic possessions to recreate a look of a 1950s  Chatham Fish Pier, fitted with coal bins, wooden lobster pots, ropes and gear. Ironically as this area is one the last in town not to be rehabbed to look like someone else's perspective of  Chatham by the sea.  now, after a week of decorating the dock looks like it always has, except more cohesive, precise and muted in color. The area will be the back drop for film scenes, movie stars, and about a 100 local extras. 

This is day one of filming in the Stage Harbor-area. I hear today's plan is to film out at the entrance of the harbor. The collective properties at the junction of Stage Harbor and Champlain Rd are the jumping off point for the days filming out near Hardings Beach Light and the cut.  

It is not yet sunrise. A floodlight washes over the shoreline next door. It’s quiet, except for the whispered directions of a handful of overseers, beeping trucks and the hum of a pontoon boat at the  adjacent town landing.  

A lone Chatham police office stands watch in the parking lot. It starts to rain.